Sensemaking in Novel Environments: How Human Cognition can Inform Artificial Agents

Abstract

One of the most vital cognitive skills to possess is the ability to make sense of objects, events, and situations in the world. In the current paper, we offer an approach for creating artificially-intelligent agents with the capacity for sensemaking in novel environments. First, sensemaking is represented as sign relations embedded within and across frames (i.e., schemata). Such sign relations are represented as probabilities in a Bayesian Network to reflect uncertainty. Moreover, synthesized patterns can arise from an interplay among different sources of knowledge--a feature of distributed representations--thus, synthesized patterns could be recognized as signs during the sensemaking process in a novel environment. Finally, those aspects of memories that get synthesized can be determined via an unconscious, embodied simulation process that aligns different combinations of attributes from different memories to find a solution to the sensemaking. In sum, we offer a novel approach by suggesting that attributes across memories can be shared and recombined in novel ways to create synthesized signs, which can denote certain outcomes in novel environments (i.e., sensemaking).

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 18, 2024
Accession Number
AD1230305

Entities

People

  • Anna M. Maresca
  • Barbara Acker-mills
  • Erica Curtis
  • Jared Culburtson
  • Justin Nelson
  • Kevin Schmidt
  • Mary E. Frame
  • Regina Buccello-stout
  • Robert E. Patterson

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Readers

  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Regression Analysis.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML